301 smart answers to tough interview questions

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INTRODUCTION

How to Prepare for the

Most Harrowing

Forty-Five Minutes

of Your Life:

The Job Interview

In today’s “buyer’s market” jobs are scarce, and hundreds of candidates compete for all too few positions. Companies have been forced to become incredibly selective as they sort through resume after resume from scores of qualified candidates. Due to other forces in the marketplace, glowing references do not carry nearly as much weight as they used to. As a result, the interview has become more like a final exam in college or even graduate school, complete with trick questions, curveballs, and ludicrously tough questions designed to shake out the applicant “plum tree” by deliberately putting candidates on the spot. While the average interview still lasts for approximately forty-five minutes, it could well be the most harrowing forty-five minutes of your life. Interviewers no longer tend to ask “How well do you respond to pressure?” ; they seek to determine it for themselves instantly, in your very first meeting, by mercilessly tossing you into a simulated pressure cooker situation. How do you prepare for today’s new, rigorous, psychologically draining interview? You need to treat it like the final exam (or trial) that it really is, and study for it. The purpose of this book is to give you a quick reference guide to the 301 questions you are most likely to hear, and a way to answer them with intelligence, passion, and a certain flair that will help you best your competitors. Tips, brief analyses of why these techniques work, and helpful suggestions on how to rise above the pack will be peppered throughout. Make no mistake: in order to prevail, you are going to need to trounce your competition. With all of the layoffs that have taken place during the past few years, it’s entirely likely that the company where you really want to work will be interviewing people from several different levels to fill the position you seek. You could be competing against someone with three times your experience, or conversely, against someone who can do the job at half your salary level. How do you get over the hump? How do you convince this organization that you are the ideal candidate for the job, and to hell with the competition? Here are the 10 critical steps that you need to take to ace your first interview, so that you can move on to your second, third, and fourth interviews (at which point, hopefully, they’ll offer you the job already).

Top 10 Ways to Nail the Interview 1. Breathe deeply, and try not to panic. That was easy. Phew! 2. Try to set up your meeting for one full week (five business days) from the time that you first receive the call to come in. Your tendency will be to go for an earlier meeting to “get it over with.” Do not yield to this instinct. You will need the time to prepare for your meeting. (Of course, if the interviewer insists on an earlier date, graciously accept it.) 3. Do your homework. Get on the Internet, and pull every article you can find about the company. Don’t just read the articles; study and dissect them. Start crafting a “master list” of questions of your own about the company, based on the information that you unearth. 4. Go wider and deeper. Look up the company’s website. Obtain past Annual Reports from the organization, and review them as if your life depended on it. Buy trade publications from your field;